What I'm Reading: Jesus Rediscovered

I am personally convinced that our Western European civilization is approaching its end. This is an absolutely basic part of my thinking, which governs all my feelings about the world that I live in. There is to me every symptom of our civilization petering out. This was bound to happen sometime; it just seems to me to be happening now, when I am alive. I think there are advantages in living at a time when a civilization is coming to an end; in such a situation, one can much better understand the nature of power, just as one can better understand the nature of the body when one is sick. In a dying civilization one is at least not taken in by power and authority, as one easily might be when conditions are flourishing.